Senator Dodd Plays the Pot to GM's Kettle

The "key lawmaker" is Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), who imparted this nugget of wisdom on a popular morning news program:

"It is not my job to hire and fire, but what I'm trying to suggest is that you need to have new teams in place," Dodd told ABC's Good Morning America show on Monday.

"If you are going to restructure a company you can't be asking the people frankly, many who were involved in creating the problems we're in, to be involved in restructuring."

Pot, meet kettle. Or, as I usually refer to him, "Connecticut's other senator." (Full disclosure: he is my senator.) Despite his seniority in Washington, few people outside of Connecticut had heard of Dodd until recently. In fact, so few people had heard of Dodd that his run for the Democratic presidential nomination garnered him a whopping 0% of the vote in Iowa, making him one of the first casualties of the 2008 primary season. His was less of a "dark horse" candidacy than a dime-a-dozen candidacy.

His recent claim to national fame -- or is that infamy? -- is related to his involvement in the subprime mortgage meltdown. As the head of the Senate Banking Committee, Dodd was one of the stooges involved in overseeing what was going on over at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. His partner in crime was his House counterpart, Barney Frank.